Tag Archives: Spring

Time is flying…how are we already in mid-March!? This little Grain sure is growing…and moving a ton now! It is so fun to feel him or her doing somersaults in my tummy. So far I have been able to stay pretty comfortable, especially once I figured out how to sleep with a pregnancy body pillow.

It took nearly a week of practice (it is like having another person in bed…poor Matt has no room!) but it is seriously a life saver. Particularly because my preggo brain decided to obsess about sleeping on my left side. We were told that sleeping on either side is fine, but left is best…which meant I would wake up all night just to check which side I was on. The body pillow helps me from tossing and turning and keeps me on my left most of the time.

Another comfort saving grace? My Storq leggings. Recommended by a friend, I splurged and got a few nice basic pieces of maternity clothes from Storq. Now they are my go tos and are SO COMFORTABLE! No pilling, no stretching out, and they look fantastic. High quality and super soft and stretchy…and dare I say fashionable? No rouching or traditional “maternity” looking style here. I am sold. Now I need to find a new bra that I love as much!

I have dedicated myself to continuing to be active, getting to the pool for lap swim and water aerobics at least once a week, and working out at my office gym at least 2x per week with cardio and weights or a class. I feel so lucky to have a gym at work with trainers that can help customize a prenatal workout. It still amazes me how much weight I have gained (gulp!) but my midwife is not concerned and I still feel healthy.

The biggest challenge I have had is an onslaught of leg cramps. And not your normal “just stretch out your calf” ones either. These are wake-up-screaming-and-cannot-move cramps. Poor Matt has been scared out bed so many times now to help me stretch my leg. My midwife recommended taking magnesium, which I am, and it seems to have decreased the frequency of the cramps, but they still happen about every 3 days.

Little Grain, we are so excited to meet you! Daddy and I talk to you every evening and love to feel you kick and move. You are our constant motivation to keep making house progress, eating well, staying healthy and loving and supporting each other every day.

Another bonus this week…sunshine finally came out in our rainy part of the world! Spring is close!

It has been a gorgeous spring. Seriously…80 degree days already! My tomatoes are already BLOOMING! A good sign for actually harvesting some this year.

Our pace of life is shifting right now. Longer, sun filled evenings make us both more and less productive. We have projects to make progress on but laying in the back yard feels pretty good too! Fewer evening classes for me and less homework also makes the time feel different. Only 16 days till graduation!

Thursday brought a spectacular sunrise.

Our living room trim is painted so all that is left is the walls…and replacing all the switches and outlets. It is still beyond me who puts almond colored outlets in with white plates. White on white will help so much!

The garden is growing. Well, it is growing something. It is hard to tell if they are all just weeds or actually spouting seeds. Something keeps eating my baby peas.

Lets see, what else is new? We are actively planning life post-grad school. Summer currently has 9 weekends UNPLANNED and we are determined to keep them that way. Painting the house, building a chicken coop and gardening should be plenty to keep us occupied.

Travel is getting organized too! We have a surf trip to Oregon scheduled for September, and then we are off to Belize in January with my parents! 12 days of ruins, beaches and snorkeling! And bonus: we found tickets for less than $350 each round-trip! Score! The next plan: Todos Santos May 2015 with all the parents!

But for now, a long Memorial Day weekend at home. A new bakery is opening and we plan to finish the living room and put it back together. Life feels really good on the island.

One intensive weekend down, only two more to go. Then I am DONE with my MBA! Crazy how quickly these past two years has gone.

It was a beautiful weekend out on Bainbridge Island. Classes were so much more motivating with sunshine! To make things even better: I am taking one fewer classes this quarter. That means more free time, more conversations, more absorption and reflection as this adventure wraps up. Such a good choice.

Another bonus this weekend: my brother Troy came up to BGI and to visit us! He is working on some projects in San Francisco that connected back to BGI (super small world) and so our paths came to cross in a very cool way. When he was on campus we took a long walk and enjoyed some good meals. It was fun to share my community with him and introduce him to so many people. It still cracks me up that our very different lives have still brought us to the same people and same values in our work and communities.

With no class on Sunday (woohoo!) we were able to come back to Vashon mid morning and spend the whole afternoon in the sun. We lounged in the back yard and took a drive around the island to show Troy our place. Dinner was a picnic on the deck to soak in more brilliant sunshine.

Monday I choose to work from home, and pounded through tons of work both for school and work-work. When Matt got home we went for a beach walk adventure and then came home to another picnic dinner. Everything is blooming and bright green!

It was a great visit, and so fun to connect with Troy. It is fun to share our special place with him and compare notes on Todos Santos (another place we both feel a strong connection to) and just catch up as friends.

Or as I prefer to spell it (prior to a google search): fung schwayness. That is our beautiful little house after a weekend of projects.

We never fully moved in. There are still rooms to paint and two whole spaces are just catch-all areas for stuff we don’t know where to put. For now it is ok…we have space, and not really any time to deal with it anyway.

This past weekend we made a dent. Not in the boxes or paint, but the never ending list of little projects. You know, hang a towel bar and picture, replace light switches so they match the wall plate, clean light fixtures, replace burnt out bulbs. The super tedious stuff that just takes hands and time.

On Friday night we had a super fun dinner with ALL the parents. Matt made salmon two ways, and the mamas brought sides. Topped off with wine and fresh strawberries and cream the evening went far faster than anyone wanted.

My parents spent the night and on Saturday helped us tackle all those little to-dos. It made such.a.difference. Our living room in particular feels 1000x more complete. We put down the new rug, hung a painting, cleaned scuffs on the walls (reminds us how much the room needs fresh paint), cleaned a shelf with ¼ of dirt on it (ick!), and finally, added our antique china cabinet to the room. The furniture has always felt “off” in the room. To heavy on one end, not enough walls to balance it out. And we love all the pieces. Plus we had a gorgeous antique curved glass china cabinet that was just hanging out in the guest room. Not really a long term spot. We decided to try it out in the living room and, BOOM!, amazingness! The whole room just came together! Matt and I cannot stop dragging each other in there and exclaiming how good it feels! It’s got it’s fung schwayness! (ok ok I know that is not how it is spelled…)

Our little house is such a joy. Crocus and daffodils are blooming, and our water logged yard is just begging for spring to pop. We are ready too. 10 days till Mexico. 89 days till schools is out. We cannot wait to paint our house, enjoy our island and just BE with a little extra time.

In 100 days I will have my MBA. I will be through with my 18th year of school. I will be back to having TIME! (yea that won’t last long…)

I am so excited to tackle house projects, get back in shape, blog more, do art, garden, spend weekends homework free, and celebrate these last two years of work. Oh it will be so nice!

So what have we been up to recently? School and work. That is about it. I have been out of town more days in the past two weeks than home, and am so ready for the weekend. Two whole days of nothing but being home on our little island…maybe dotted with some snow (and I suppose homework but I am choosing to ignore that point for now). Right now it is sunny in Seattle and absolutely stunning!

Armed with a tax refund and bonus (woot!) we are tackling some house projects and some wardrobe refreshers for me. Item 1 – new living room rug! Here is a preview…it arrives on Tuesday!!!

I have be coveting a new purse for ages, specifically one that I can sling across my body on the bus. Professional style, high quality, leather, with personality. I have searched high and low and recently came across this custom beauty on Etsy! Now I just have to decide if I order it in sand (pictured) or brown. I’d love some other opinions!

We have crocus blooming and I expect other bulbs will pop open today with all this sunshine. Spring is on the way!

Spring in Seattle has been cold this year. Flowers are late, rain is still falling like it’s February, and I have only worn my chacos once. ONCE! And it’s already May!

This weekend we got a taste of the Spring that we have craved all winter. Saturday started out cold and rainy (downpour might be more accurate) but by 11 am it was sunny and starting to warm up to 60. I did house chores in the morning, and then as the sun came out, broke out the gardening gloves, shorts and a shovel and started working on my yard. We have a brand new deck (yay) that has a messy finish job (no yay) that left mud and rocks in an uneven very muddy-turning-to-cement section of our yard. I decided to tackle that first and went at it with a shovel for a few hours. I am happy to say that it now looks much better and is ready for some grass seed. Now I just need to get the rest of the gardens weeded…

Saturday night my parents came down to visit. They brought the massive green chair I had been storing there, as well as a new door for our kitchen that has a cat door! Woohoo…litter boxes in the basement will be so nice! Matt and I were running errands and out around town till 5, then came home to put dinner in the oven before they arrived. Try as we did, dinner did not go in the oven until 2 minutes before mom knocked on the door. Oh well, it was just a long conversation filled evening with dinner a little late. We downed 2 bottles of wine and had some amazing sausage/potato/onion/pepper bake that Matt put together. We swapped stories and laughed a ton, it was a lot of fun. By the time we all went to bed it was almost 11 and wer were all exhausted.

Sunday morning we went to Portage Bay Cafe for breakfast and used the gift certificate from my aunt and uncle (thank you!). Breakfast was wonderful, full of good food and more laughter and stories. We then went home to hang the door and fix a few last minute things before driving to Gig Harbor to welcome my aunt and uncle and their 3 girls who moved on Saturday! Matt had to work that afternoon. Bummer.

We loved Kim and Doug’s new house. It is right on the water and could not be a more perfect place. The deck is massive and will be a wonderful place this summer. I am so excited to have them close. Unfortunately, I was starting to feel really sick as we drove to Gig Harbor, and by the time we got there I could barely talk from a sore throat. Some tea helped, as did the sunshine and hugs from little giggly cousins, but when we got back to West Seattle all I could do was crash. I felt awful. On such a beautiful day too. What a shame.

Monday I stayed home from work and slept and drank tons of tea. Finally started to feel better in the afternoon and managed to get some work done. Wireless internet is amazing. Matt brought home ingredients to make chicken noodle soup so we had that and watch An Officer & A Gentleman and reminisced about Port Townsend. I love that place. By the time we went to bed I was feeling much better and ready for a good night’s sleep.

I have been on the road and sea with my parents and grandma for the past 9 days touring around the state of Alaska. We started with a cruise from Vancouver, BC on the Coral Princess. We saw Skagaway, Ketchikan, Juneau, Glacier Bay and College Fjord before disembarking in Whittier. We saw whales, the old gold rush trails, lots of Alaskan fishing boats, and my favorite, the glaciers. Glacier Bay was awesome. Calving glaciers sending huge chunks of ice cascading into the icy water. Beautiful weather the whole trip, we really could not have asked for better. It has been between 60 and 75 every day, with glorious sunshine. We even ran into two of my high school friends who are driving tour busses in Juneau…walked off the boat and there they were! Totally unexpected…I knew they worked there but never dreamed I would actually run into them!

The cruise itself was fun, rather lacking in passengers my age which was a bummer, but I still had fun. People knew me all around the ship after I got hypnotized one night at the show. Joy. We would go out dancing in the evenings, I even got mom and dad to dance one night! We had a blast. I hung out with some of the cruise staff who were my age and that was fun. And of course we had way too much really good food.

Now we are on our land tour through Fairbanks, Denali and Anchorage, aka: lots of time in the car. Fairbanks we hung out with one of Troy’s old boyscout buddies, Josh, who is driving busses for Princess this summer up here. We got our own personal tour of this no-so-exciting place. Glad we saw it though. We went to the town of North Pole and were slightly disturbed with all the santa and candy cane paraphernalia around town.

Today we were in Denali, taking the green school bus tour of the park. It really is much more spectacular when you drive in. It was again a beautiful clear sunny day, and we saw moose, bears, caribou, fox, hares, and dall sheep. Things are just starting to bud out now, so it was still pretty barren looking. This park was not really what I expected (well neither is AK for that matter), not bad, just different from what I had pictured. I expected to be absolutely blown away. It is pretty, but I think we are spoiled living in Washington and so this is nothing too out of the norm. I think the cruise is defiantly the way to go, the AK coastline is far more impressive than the land in my opinion. It has been a great trip though. I am not ready to get back to work on wednesday…